Fight restaurant cravings by making restaurant meals at home

One way I've found to keep my eating out in control is to figure out how to make some of my favorite restaurant dishes at home. Sure, they probably won't taste quite as good. And part of the enjoyment of eating out is not having to do all the darn work to make it! But, at least for me, another reason I'm often lured into eating out instead of eating in is that I'm craving a particular favorite dish.

So I've tried to experiment with making these favorites myself. Of course this doesn't always work. In some cases, the pleasure is not in the dish itself but how well it's executed. And in other cases, like my beloved Chicago-style deep dish spinach stuffed pizza from Giordano's, recreating the taste would be incredibly complicated and still likely fall short. But there's certainly a place for this approach.

For me, one example is enchiladas. I used to go out for Mexican a lot because I love cheese enchiladas and I had no idea how to make decent-tasting ones at home. I'd attempted it once with a store-bought sauce and it was terrible, and that put me off trying for awhile. So when I was in the mood for enchiladas, I'd tell myself, "Tonight's a night to go out to a Mexican restaurant."

But eventually-- I think it was actually one night when I was home and had changed into comfy clothes and the weather was lousy and I didn't want to go out anywhere-- I pushed myself to find an enchilada recipe I could make at home and be happy with. So I searched around the internet, and I experimented, and I found a recipe I really enjoyed. So now when I'm in the mood for enchiladas, I have the option of making cheap and tasty ones myself at home, and that's usually what I choose.

So am I the only one who gets tempted out to restaurants by the prospect of specific delicious dishes? And who tries to find ways to recreate them at home instead? Heck, if there's actually a lot of us, we could even have a recipe swap...